Development of Proximity-Coupled-Fed S-Band Array Antenna for Microwave Imaging

This paper deals with the development of a proximity-coupled-fed S-band array antenna intended for microwave imaging application. The array antenna which is designed to work at the center frequency of 3 GHz is employed as a sensing device to transmit and receive emitted electromagnetic waves. The proposed array antenna is deployed on two layers of FR4 epoxy dielectric substrate and composed of four square patches arranging in a 2 × 2 configuration. After hardware realization, the fabricated array antenna is experimentally characterized and measured in an anechoic chamber. The characterization result demonstrate that the fabricated array antenna has the reflection coefficient of −17.29 dB at its center frequency, with the fractional bandwidth of 9.3% in the frequency range from 2.92 GHz to 3.2 GHz. These results are comparable to the simulated ones and adequate for the desired application.